


Haunting

by thisismydesign



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged Up, Angst, Fluff, Ghosts, Haunted House, M/M, Slow Burn, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12166278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismydesign/pseuds/thisismydesign
Summary: By law, a seller has to disclose if there was ever a death on the property. Lucky for Stan he’s never been superstitious.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I proofread and edited it a couple of times, but apologize in advance if I missed any mistakes. It's nearly 2 in the morning :')

When Stan saw that the house on Neibolt Street had been put up for sale, he jumped on the opportunity. He was an Atlanta transplant that found himself recently moved to Derry with the promise of taking over his cousin’s accounting business in the small town. At the ripe age of twenty-five, it was hardly an offer that he could refuse, nor wanted to refuse. His cousin had been the only accountant in Derry, and now that he was handing on the mantle to Stan, business was bound to be good. 

The move had been for the most part spontaneous and took most of Stan’s savings to do so. The well wasn’t entirely empty, but he hadn’t started his new job quite yet which made finding an affordable place to live like pulling teeth. Even in the small town of Derry, where Stan thought would be cheaper than a large city like Atlanta, Stan struggled financially. Some accountant he was. 

And so, when he stumbled upon the newly renovated, several bedroom house that was 29 Neiboldt Street, Stan could hardly believe his eyes. He was certain that there had been some sort of mistake. It wasn’t until Stan had meet with the realtor and took a tour of the house did he understand why it was so affordable. 

“As you can see the there are two and a half baths and five bedrooms,” the realtor told Stan as they stood in the main lounge of the house. “It’s plenty of space for a family. Do you have children Mr Uris?” 

“Yeah no,” Stan told her with a bit of a bemused chuckle. “I’m only twenty-five. This house is actually a bit too big. I’m not sure what I’d do with all of this space if I’m going to be completely honest.” 

“Oh I’m sure you’ll find use for it,” she insisted continuing to lead Stan into the living room adjacent to the lounge. “Most of the furniture was are original pieces that were left by the house’s past owners. The current sellers got much of it reupholstered. It certainly give the house a unique look. Now the decor does indeed come with the home.” 

Unique was certainly a word for it, Stan decided. The house looked like it was going through a serious of identity crises where it could not make up it’s mind on how it wanted to look. There was a mixture of retro vintage patterns, to turn of the century moulding, complete with contemporary design. It was far from anything Stan would remotely consider to be his choice of decor, but the house was big and he hadn’t brought a lot of furniture from Atlanta, so he figured it might as well stay. 

“Definitely unique,” Stan agreed. “When can we start wrapping this up? I think I’ve made up my mind. It’s a really nice house.” 

“Now the law requires me to disclose any accidents that have occurred on the property in the last three years,” his realtor told him, looking rather nervous.

Yes, of course. This was the hook, line, and sinker Stan was expecting. He was a realistic man with a fairly good head on his shoulders. He knew that when something felt too good to be true, it was because it often was. A house of this size with the renovations and the time put into bringing it up to modern standards did not go on the market for the price the sellers were asking without there being a catch. This must’ve been the catch, Stan figured. 

“Two years ago, there was an accident that happened that resulted in a death,” she informed him, folding her hand in front of her as if she was expecting Stan to opt out now. Stan looked at her as though he was unfazed. “Now--Now any trace of the accident was been cleaned and new floors have been installed. There isn’t anything lingering in this house that still would connect it to the m--” 

“I’ll take it,” Stan interrupted her. There was no point for her to continue as far as he was concerned. “People die everyday. It’s part of life. Some people die in more unfortunate places than others. This house is beautiful, it couldn’t have been too bad of a place to pass. Now let’s talk numbers and show me where to sign.”

.

The first week after Stan moved into his new house was uneventful. He spent the majority of it in his kitchen, sitting at the dinner table going through the books of the business his cousin had recently turned over to him. Stan was quick to realize that his eagerness to take over the trade was quickly going to bite him in the ass as Stan found the reason his cousin was so eager to rid himself of it was the impeccable amount of debt the company had found itself in. For an accountant, it was clear to Stan that his cousin had no idea how to manage money. 

Stan put a file down in front of him with a bit more force than was probably necessary as he sighed and rubbed his face in frustration. He should have looked into what he was getting himself into before he had actually gotten himself into it. But alas, there Stan was sitting alone at an empty table, in an empty kitchen, in an empty house with nothing but his very own business that was on the verge of bankruptcy. 

“You sure won the lotto with this one, Stanley,” he grumbled to himself before letting his hands fall to the table in front of him. 

It was late. Far too late to be up working and Stan knew that at this point he was just spinning his wheels. He had gone over the numbers at least a thousand times tangibly and then another thousand times in his head. He wasn’t coming up with anything new. It was time for him to go to bed. After all, insanity was doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. Stan wasn’t insane. He was just trying to hold on to the last shred of hope he still had. 

Closing the box of business files, Stan got up from the table and made him way out of the kitchen, turning the light off behind him. He used the light from his phone to guide him up the steep stairwell and to the room that he had laid claim to. Not that there was much competition for space. 

At night, the house had an almost eerie atmosphere to it that Stan had chalked down to old age. The house creaked and moaned with age, and often the pipes rattled after he used the water. Stan could only assume that some things not even the most advance renovations could fix, and so he learned rather quickly to get use to the noises. 

Stan shoved his phone into his sweatpants pocket as the moonlight from outside his hall window lit his path once Stan made it up the stairs. At the end of the hall way was his bedroom. Pushing the door open, Stan heard something behind him that made him turn on his heels. It had sounded like the giggle of a child and the loud screech of an old-timey radio. Stan’s brow furrowed at he looked down the hall into the unlit darkness at the end. There was no more laughing, there was no more static, but when Stan squinted he thought he could make out the shape of muddy boot prints on the wooden floors. 

Stan didn’t investigate and instead turned around to go into his bedroom, closing the door calmly behind him. 

He really needed to stop going over financial documents so late at night. 

. 

“You’re the new guy, aren’t you?” was the question that interrupted Stanley from his thoughts. 

It was late in the afternoon. Stan had gone into his office early to retrieve more records. Once his cousin handed over the business, he had made magically disappeared. Or rather, skipped town was more likely. Stan had ended up spending the majority of the day at the building as he had been doing for the last two weeks since his official move.

It was his growling stomach that had made Stan decide to wrap up his work for the day and head home. On the way, however, he stopped at the grocery store to pick up some food. One of the many perks of having a bachelor pad was that there was never anything to eat there. Ever. 

“You’re the new guy,” the cashier repeated. Stan hadn’t even realized that he had made it to the front of the line. “You just moved in. The house on Neilbolt Street, am I right?” 

Stan nodded in response. “Um, yeah. Yeah, that’s me,” he agreed. 

“You some kind of writer?” she asked. Lucky for her there was no one in line behind Stan. Unlucky for Stan that seemed to make her think she had the opportunity to talk to him. “I always imagined a writer was going to move in there. For inspiration or somethin’. Because, you know, that place is haunted.” 

Stan looked her disinterestedly. “How much do I owe you?” Stan asked. 

“27.52,” the cashier told him before taking Stan’s cash as he handed it to her. “You know people died in there, right?” 

“The realtor told me when I bought it,” Stan replied, not entirely sure why he was entertaining their conversation. Perhaps it was because this was the first real human interaction he has had moved to Derry. Stan tried not to think about how pathetic that was. He was from a city where people and conversation was abundant. Even as a bit of a loner, Stan was use to having a bit more outside interaction. 

“Pretty morbid,” the cashier said handing Stan his change. 

“People die everyday,” Stan told her, pocketing his change and picking up his grocery bag before leaving the store. 

One thing that did stand out about their conversation, however, that Stan had dwelled on briefly during his walk home was how the cashier had said people. In the initial conversation with the realtor, she had only mentioned the death of on person on the property. _People_ implied _more_ than one. 

Stan decided to brush it off as a bad choice of word. 

.

Derry was boring. 

If Stan wasn’t working, he found himself struggling to find something to do. This was never a problem in Atlanta and the more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to regret his decision to move to a nobody town like Derry. Stan tried his best not to become resentful, but the more he tried to push the feelings away, the more he was realizing how bitter he was becoming. 

In an effort to give himself some form of peace of him, Stan forbade himself of working that day. If he couldn’t look at proof the the mess he got himself into, then perhaps he could get himself to focus on something else. 

And so, that was how he ended up sitting on his back patio, watching birds as the flew by. It was hardly the most interesting of pastimes, but it had been something Stan enjoyed since he was a boy. Bird watching was a hobby that, much like a lot of aspects of what made Stan who he was, was forgotten or archived away when he went to college. 

Derry was boring, but now that Stan thought about it, he was pretty boring too. Perhaps him and the town deserved each other. 

A bird sang overhead and Stan watched it as it passed over the yard. Flying out of view, Stan looked back forward into the trees. Out of the corner of his eye, however, something caught Stan’s attention laying in the tall grass of his backyard. Standing up, Stan walked over to the large moving object, trying to figure out what he was looking at. 

It was until Stan stood several feet away from it did he realize he was looking at a bike that was laid on it’s side. The back wheel was spinning slightly. Not in the way that suggested it was currently being pedaled, but in the sort of way that suggested that had just been and now was spinning off of inertia alone. 

Stan stood up straight again and looked around the backyard. It was empty aside from himself, the bike, and a few birds that were still hanging around. He hadn’t seen anyone bring the bike into his backyard, but the only thing Stan could assume had happened was one of the neighbor kids left it there and that perhaps the wind was just pushing the wheel. 

Stan went inside soon after, ignoring the fact that as far as wind went, it was a doldrum kind of day. 

. 

Stan felt like he was dying. 

It had been three days since he had woken up with a severe sinus headache, and three days since it had begun to steadily get worse. At first he had just ignored it and took some Aspirin for the pain, but the over the counter blood thinner was no longer doing the trick for his crippling headache. Stan could have gone to the doctors, but the insurance wasn’t there. He would have gone to the pharmacist, but then he would have needed a prescription, thus, had to see a doctor.

At this point Stan had self medicated with hot baths, equally as hot tea, and as many naps as he could physically force his body to do. 

In other words, he was miserable. 

Stan hadn’t left his bed yet that day. He might not have been on death’s door, but he certainly wasn’t feeling active enough to partake in life. It wasn’t under early afternoon came along and the idea of lunch planted the the desire to get up. But it truly wasn’t until he heard the undeniable sound of something falling over downstairs did Stan actually decide to do so. 

Once downstairs, Stan was almost disappointed to find that nothing had changed. The feeling was fleeting. Instead, he focused his attention on making himself lunch in the gourmet form of canned soup. As he ate, Stan tried not to notice the emptiness that was his kitchen, or how silently empty the too-big house was. Distantly, Stan considered the idea of getting a dog. Something, anything to fill the silence. 

Midst thought, however, a ruckus similar to that he heard earlier rang through the house yet again, but this time it came from upstairs. Confused, and finished with his lunch, Stan decided he might as well investigate. It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do, and if it turned out to be nothing, it wasn’t like Stan wasn’t going to go back to bed anyway. 

A chill of suspense went down Stan’s spine as he ascended the stairs slowly. The stairs creaked beneath his feet with each step he took closer to the top. Once again, Stan found himself feeling mildly disappointed when he got to the top and was greeted by an empty hallway. In retrospect, he wasn’t entirely sure what he thought he was going to find, or if he even wanted to find anything at all, but the small moment of excitement seemed short lived as it had an anticlimactic ending. 

It wasn’t until Stan had got to the doorway of his room did he hear something behind him. 

“Hey.” 

The sound was ephemeral. Stan had to consider whether or not he had actually heard anything at all, but when Stan turned around in the direction that the voice had come from, he spotted something small and black laying in the center of his hallway. Stan recalled back to the night two, almost three, weeks ago when he thought he might have seen footprints. This object was in the same place. 

The hairs on the back of Stan’s neck stood up and he could feel goosebumps form up the length of his arms. Whatever this was (Stan was still unsure) was not there a moment ago when he had walked down the hall. Though too small to make out what it was from where Stan stood, it was still large enough that he would have absolutely noticed it before. Especially since he had been looking for anything that might have been different. 

Briefly, Stan mulled over in his head his next action. He knew what he should do was turn back around, close the door, and go to bed. Stan would just blame the entire ordeal on his sinus headache and forget any of it happened. At least, that would he _should_ do. 

Instead, Stan decided to approach the object. Cautiously at first, but as he got closer and became more bewildered by the object, Stan became less careful as he became more perplex. Bending over, brows knitted in confusion, Stan picked up the black fabric object and turned it over in his hand. 

A fanny pack? 

When Stan opened it up, he found an array of different items ranging from assorted unlabeled pills of all different shapes and sizes, to an inhaler, and finally to a bottle of over the counter medication. When Stan picked it out of the other items to further investigate he was that it read “sinus relief” on the label. Putting the bottle back inside the pack, Stan did a once over of his hall again before peering down the stairwell. 

Empty. 

Stan moved to open the door to one of his unoccupied bedrooms. 

Empty. 

Across the hall he checked the other bedroom. 

Also empty. 

He rushed downstairs. The adrenaline in his body overshadowed the pulsating ache from his head. The kitchen was empty. The lounge was empty. The living room was empty. Bathrooms empty. 

The house was empty. 

Stan was a realist. He had a fairly good head on his shoulders. He knew that when something felt too good to be true, it was because it often was. Not that Stan was entirely sure that he considered _this_ too good to be be true. Once was an accident, though. Twice was a coincidence. Three times was a pattern. 

“Hello?” Stan eventually asked. 

Silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In an effort to get answers, it became clear to Stan that he had only created more questions.

“You know that house is haunted.” 

Stan couldn’t count the number of times on his hands combined that someone had told him that. He just didn’t have enough fingers. It was never amusing, but in the beginning weeks since he had moved to Derry and began to intergrade himself loosely into the community, the statement didn’t necessarily bother him either. Somehow, telling Stan about his supposedly haunted house had become a synonym for hello for the residence of Derry. 

People were going to talk about him around town regardless. It was something his cousin had told him about before Stan had even relocated. In a town where nothing went on, even the most minute change became the most interesting topic. Everyone knew one another here after all. This meant being a outsider made Stan stand out. Being an outsider and living in the notoriously haunted house on Neibolt Street made his presence even more blatantly obvious. 

It made Stan a constant conversation piece for conversations he was never involved in.

If Stan were to briefly entertain the idea that his new home was, in fact, crawling with supernatural pests, then it would only make sense that he would know better than anyone else, wouldn’t he? His better judgment fought endlessly to reign supreme that whenever Stan found himself wondering too far down the path of ‘what ifs’, his logical side would quickly steer him back towards reality. If the people of Derry truly believed the house was haunted, they wouldn’t have to remind him that it was. Stan used this proof that there was nothing unusual happening in his dwelling. 

Ignorance, after all, was bliss. 

In fact, if it weren’t the constant reminders from other town folk, Stan might have been able to forget the outrageous rumor all together. It had been two months since he had moved to Derry, and an entire month since he had found the fanny pack on the floor of his upstairs hallway. Since then, nothing had appeared out of the usual. There were no spontaneous items suddenly showing up. No more child laughter. No more unusual sounds coming form the other side of the house. And no more fanny packs. 

Stan had been able to chalk the entire ordeal down to the stresses that came with moving and readjusting to such a different environment. Now that he was settled, everything around him had settled as well. 

Unfortunately for Stan, however, things didn’t stay quiet for long.

.

“There’s no way he’s going to last long.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just look at him. Maybe two years tops?” 

“Th..that’s n..nu..not funny, Richie.” 

“Even Ben lasted longer than that.”

“ _Hey._ ”

“He’s going to die, isn’t he?” 

“W..we don’t kn..know that.” 

“But Billy, everyone always does.” 

“Who wants to place their bets? I say year, maybe year and a half.” 

“Shut up, dipshits, you’re waking him up.”

“No we aren’t. Look at him, he’s looks deader then us.”

Stan stirred. 

“I think he just moved.” 

“Come on, guys, let’s go before he wakes up.”

Stan’s eyes opened to the bright morning light and an empty bedroom.

.

It had started small. Very small. The size of a paperclip, in fact. 

Growing up, Stan was often made fun of for how organized he was. With the intentions of being hurtful some had even called him compulsive, but Stan disagreed. He just liked things to be neat and in there place. Everything he owned had a spot, and everything he owned was always accounted for. This way his things stayed tidy, and he always knew where something was should he need it. 

So, when things began to disappear it was particularly unusual. 

Stan was not entirely sure when it had started as it was small things that went missing at first. The sort of things that should he not constantly need them, he wouldn’t have been any the wiser to their disappearance. Such as when Stan was preparing documents for the first client since he moved to the town. When Stan had gone to grab a paperclip to keep the paperwork together, he found that they weren’t where he put them. 

Odd, but not the end of the world. Stan had ended up just using a staple instead. 

This was not the case for long. Soon enough Stan was beginning to realize more things were missing. Coffee mugs. Socks. His phone charger. Toilet paper. Stan knew for a fact that he did not lose toilet paper. Nevertheless, it was gone and Stan couldn't quite understand how. 

Not everything went missing indefinitely, though. Some things Stan figured he had simply just misplaced only to find it again later. This was also rather unusual for him considering Stan always took pride in being responsible with his possessions. Particularly the ones he frequently used like his laptop, house keys, or even stranger, his phone. 

In fact, it was the time when Stan couldn't find his phone that Stan stopped considering things to be simply unusual and began believing that something was wrong. He knew he wasn't this forgetful. Like most millennial, Stan didn't go very long stretches without at the very least being able to account for where his devices were. And so, when his phone had went unaccounted for Stan was frustrated. Particularly so since it wasn't anywhere to be seen for the better part of a week. 

He was lounging on the couch one evening, half watching a program on Animal Planet, half lost in his thoughts when the distant chime of a cellphone ringing began to go off. He recognized it as his ringtone and quickly took the opportunity to follow the sound. It quickly became apparent to Stan, however, that when he tried to pinpoint exactly where the ring was coming from, he couldn't hone in on a single location or even a direction to follow. 

It sounded as though the ringing was coming from all around him. 

The ringing began to grow louder and more abrasive, surrounding Stan from every direction. At this point, it sounded as though the phone was right up against his ear. Stan looked around himself hastily, but there was nothing. 

"Are you going to answer that?" came a voice that Stan could hear clearly above the rings. Much like the ringing, however, Stan wasn't sure _where_ it had come from either. 

As quickly as it had all begun, the ringing had stop. The room was silent again, save for the familiar voice of Steve Irwin on the television.

The next morning, Stan found his cellphone sitting on his kitchen counter. 

.

“Derry is nice,” Stan said one evening. He had his phone pressed against his ear with his shoulder holding it into place as Stan went from one corner of his kitchen to the other putting away clean dishes. “I really like it here, mom. Atlanta was becoming too suffocating. It’s a nice change of scenery.”

Stan couldn’t help but wonder if his words sounded as fake as they felt. The alternative was to tell his mother that he had made a terrible mistake. That Derry was awful. That he had spent all off his saving investing in a doomed business and buying a house that kept him trapped in this town. In reality, Stan missed his family, his friends, and his life back in Georgia. But this was all something that he could not and would not confess. It wasn’t that he was too proud per say, Stan just tended to be a perfectionist. Nothing about his situation now was perfect.

“Yes, I have a job,” Stan replied to the voice on the other end of the call. Stan grabbed a clean bowl from the dishwasher, but when he turned to put it away Stan noticed that the powder room across from the kitchen had it’s light on. Thinking nothing of it, Stan put the bowl down and went to turn it off. “Having your own business is the most  _real_  a job can get, mom.”

Returning to putting the dishes away, Stan listened to his mother talk on the other end of the line. He was only distantly paying attention to her when he had noticed that the light in the bathroom had turned back on. Without much thought, Stan made his way back to the bathroom, flipped the switch, and turned back toward his kitchen. 

Flick. 

Stan’s brows furrowed as he looked over his shoulder. He hadn’t even gotten to the kitchen again this time when he saw that the downstairs bathroom was illuminated once more. 

“I have to go,” Stan said without offering anymore information to his mother before hanging up the phone and putting it into his pocket. This time Stan was beginning to become uneasy as he turned his body to face the bathroom once more. Stan remained where he stood for what felt like eons, and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to budge anytime soon, the light turned off. Then on, and then off. 

Immediately Stan could tell that it wasn’t the sort of flickering that happened when a lightbulb was about to die, but rather deliberate movement.

Stan was really beginning to hate how uneasy this house made him feel. 

If Stan had stuck to his better judgement, he would have ignored the light. He knew how these sort of things went. He knew how this particular cliche had always played out. But even Stan (who kept to himself, minded his own business, and only did most things based on reason) sometimes was bested by his own curiosity. And so, Stan finally moved. 

He would be lying if he said that he expected to see anything substantial in the bathroom. While it had been several weeks since the last incident, Stan still have a fairly good idea how this played out. He would hear something and then go to look only to find whatever made the sound was gone. Or he would find something entirely out of the blue, but the next day when he went to go look at it Stan wouldn’t be able to find it again.

So when Stan had made it to the bathroom and actually saw someone standing in front of the mirror, he felt both shocked and frightened.  
The figure was leaning over the sink and peering closely at his reflection in the mirror as he straightened his glasses and groomed his wavy hair into place. Stan wanted to blink, or to rub his eyes. Do _something_ in order to correct his vision because there was absolutely no way that someone was standing there in his bathroom. It was late, all of the doors were locked. He had been home all day. No one could have gotten in and yet... 

“Hey, can’t a guy get some privacy around here?” the guy requested in an almost theatrical voice. When he turned towards Stan was when he was able to get a full body look at the stranger in his bathroom. If Stan wasn’t so frightened, he would be able to better appreciate how ridiculous the specter looked clad in his plus-fours, lapel vest, and brogue shoes. 

To Stan, the man looked almost as if he had stepped right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. 

Before Stan had a chance to react, the stranger had reached out to pull the door closed. Stan was speechless. Once he was finally able to blink, there was no light shining from beneath the bathroom door.

.

Stan was having trouble sleeping. By now he figured it was either far too late into the night or far too early in the morning for anyone to be not to be asleep without a good reason. It was the dubious memory of the other night when the man had suddenly appeared in his bathroom that was keeping him awake, Stan knew. In his opinion, this was considered a fairly good reason to be awake. 

The issue was that Stan didn't _want_ to be awake or _want_ to think about the him. 

It was difficult to deny the obvious when the obvious was becoming more, well, _obvious_. 

Eventually, Stan pulled himself out of bed realizing that he had lost the battle of trying to sleep. He went downstairs. The house was quiet and still, much to his liking. Once in the kitchen, Stan began to make himself some coffee. If he was going to be awake, he figured that he might as well be awake enough to get work done. 

Stan sat down in front of his laptop, coffee set to the side, as he waited for his work program to boot up. Leaning back in his chair, Stan stretched his arms out with his eyes wondering to the window. It was raining outside, but he didn't mind. It often rained in Atlanta. Though what he was use to wasn't the bone chilling thunderstorms that were native to Derry, Maine. 

Stan forced his mind to wonder towards anything that wasn't his spectral experience the other night. He thought about work. His business. He thought about his friends back in Atlanta as well as his ex he left behind after a messy breakup. As Stan's mind wondered, his eyes did as well before settling on his back window. 

Or more specifically, on the obscure figure that was standing in the distance of his back garden. 

Stan leaned forward in his chair as if doing so would suddenly make what he was seeing clearer. The rain has been heavy and was running down the windows in thick layers. This added with the proximity and darkness of night made it difficult for Stan to make out exactly what he was looking at. All he could tell for certain was that the form was a short, humanoid, and wearing yellow. 

At this point Stan had come to realize that every time something out of the usual appeared, it was his decision to investigate that always made things ended badly. Not terribly bad since nothing bad had necessarily happened, but enough to make Stan uncomfortable. For this, Stan quickly tore his eyes away from the window. He didn’t want to take his chances. Stan absolutely did _not_ want another encounter like the previous one. 

If he wasn’t looking at it, it wasn’t actually there. If he just ignored it, it would go away. If he continued to deny that something was happening, then nothing actually was. Or so Stan reasoned. 

He tried to turn his attention back to his work, but quickly found that filling out one spreadsheet after another became increasingly difficult when he could see something moving in his peripheral. Whatever it was in his garden was doing something, but Stan had noticed how it wasn’t coming towards him. The being, whatever it was, continued to stay near the back fence where the edge of his property met the rest of Derry. It was moving, but it wasn’t moving for him and this made Stan’s curiosity get the better of him. 

Cautiously, Stan’s gaze left the bright familiar sight of his laptop screen and went back to the dark unknown of what was lurking in his backyard. Sure enough, the yellow figure was still out there, but it seemed to Stan that it hadn’t noticed him and was preoccupied with something else entirely.

“You’re out of your god damn mind,” Stan murmured to himself, getting up from his seat and making his way to the backdoor. Through the glass of the patio, he could see the figure much more clearly. It’s wasn’t facing Stan, and when Stan squinted to try and make out more details, he could see that it was clearly human and small, as if they were a child. Stan could see that it was... playing?

In a split second of questionable decision making, Stan quickly opened the backyard and stepped out. Immediately he was hit with the strong wind and heavy rain of the thunderstorm, his bare feet sinking into the muddy grass. He walked towards the boy who had yet to notice Stan moving in on him. Once Stan was close enough, he could tell that the boy was wearing rain boots. The size and shape reminded him of the muddy footprints that first started this all.

“Hey!” Stan said loud enough to be heard over the downpour and rustling tree leave. When the boy turned towards him he appeared to be startled, like he had been caught in some sort of heinous act. He was looking at Stan as if Stan was the one who wasn’t supposed to be there. 

“Wait!” Stan demanded. Stan wasn’t entirely sure what compelled him to be uncharacteristically audacious, but the boy looked like a trapped, nervous animal. Stan knew it was only a matter of time until he booked it. Stan also knew that he would quite possibly never have any peace of mind if he didn’t start getting at least some answers.

The boy seemed to hesitate, like he was trapped between the decision of knowing what he should do versus knowing what he wanted do to. This was something Stan could relate to. In the end, it appeared that the boy decided to stay, though it was clear he was on edge. Stan then realized he wasn’t actually sure what he wanted to say. 

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Stan decided on. Stan wondered distantly if it was the boy or himself he was telling this to. The boy in his yard clearly wasn’t of the alive variety. It was his pasty and clammy skin, blue tinted lips, and the fact he was missing an arm that was bleeding out that clued Stan in on this. 

“It’s-It’s raining,” Stan tried to reason absentmindedly as his eyes stared at the gaping cavity where the boy’s forearm should have been. 

“My brother isn’t going to like that I’m talking to you,” the boy said cautiously. Noticing Stan was staring, he had moved his injured arm behind his back and out of Stan’s sight. Realizing this, Stan quickly looked at the boy’s face instead. 

“You’re in my backyard,” Stan pointed out, still bewildered. 

The boy looked confused, as if he wasn’t entirely sure how to respond and was muling it over in his head. He ended up not saying anything, but instead just nodded. 

“What are you doing here?” Stan asked. 

“I live here,” the boy explained. 

“ _I_ live here,” Stan said. 

“I live here too,” the boy added. “With the others, and, and you too now. I guess.” 

“Others? How many of you are there?” Stan asked. He knew of one other. He had seen him the other night. He had spoken to Stan. Stan had spent every moment since trying to pretend it had never happened. 

“I should go...” the boy said, looking around almost nervously. “I don’t want to get in trouble.” 

“No, wait, wait,” Stan ask of him. The boy hesitated once again, and once again he decided not to go. Perhaps it was how desperate Stan sounded that made him stay. “Why are you here? What is going on in this god damn house, exactly? Are you the reason everyone is always telling me that it’s haunted?” 

“ _I’m_ not haunting it,” the boy said defensively. “We can’t leave. None of us can. We’re trapped here. I should really get going now.” 

“No wait" Stan said earnestly. He reached out to grab the boy by his undamaged arm to keep him from leaving. Stan wasn't exactly sure what he was expecting but the unnatural texture of the boy's arm, clad in it's raincoat, had thrown Stan off entirely. He quickly let go. It was cold. Of course it was cold, it was after all raining outside, but the kind of cold that the boy was to the touch had been something entirely different. Stan felt nauseous. 

The boy must've taken Stan's confusion as an opportunity to leave, because once Stan had recovered from the bizarre experience he was standing in his backyard alone. He boy might have been gone, but the impressions that his boots had made beside where Stan stood had not.

What had the boy meant exactly when he said it wasn’t _him_ who was haunting Stan’s house?

In an effort to get answers, it became clear to Stan that he had only created questions.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan wasn’t sure he wanted to know what sort of things scared a ghost.

It had been a light move for Stan as he didn’t own very much. Or perhaps it was the normal amount of things to own provided you didn’t have a miniature mansion made to house an entire family. Stan was simple and organized in the sort of way that even if he were to have an entire lifetime, he figured that he still wouldn’t be able to accumulate enough things to efficiently fill up the Neibolt house.

Despite this, however, Stan still managed to have boxes to put into storage. They were the sort of things that didn’t have a place in his new home or his new life. The house had come with too nice a set of dishes to use his old ones, he didn’t take pride in his college memorabilia anymore, and he was perhaps too sentimental a man to get rid of the things his ex had given to him. 

And so, into boxes to store way in the basement they went. 

Stan was careful as he carried the boxes down the steep staircase one at a time and set them in the kitchen. Stan hadn’t been down to the basement yet as he never quite had a need to. In fact, it wasn’t until earlier that day when he had been vacuuming did he even stumble upon the door. Only in the most distant of his recollection did Stan remember the realtor mentioning something about a basement. This must’ve been it. 

When he had tried to open it, Stan found it was locked.

Stan didn’t recall misplacing the house’s master key, but Stan was also unable to find it. At this point, however, Stan had come to realize that when items went missing, it very rarely had something to do with him. He was beginning to get use to it. Perhaps even begrudgingly comfortable with the fact that most things disappeared at one point of another. It was frustrating when you only kind of knew who the perpetrator was, and that even if Stan had more information on the petty crook, there wasn’t much he could do. 

Perhaps it was frustration fueled. Perhaps it was a stubborn streak that Stan never knew he had. Or perhaps Stan wanted to prove something. Which of the three, he wasn’t sure. But when the door to his basement was locked and the master key was nowhere to be found, Stan didn’t put the issue to rest. He was _not_ going to be powerless in his own home. 

So Stan grabbed the tools. 

His father had given them to him and had insisted that every man needed a fine set of tools. This was the first time Stan had ever taken them out of their case. He stared at the door in mild bewilderment. He knew what he wanted to do, he just didn’t quite know how to go about it. Stan ended up settling on removing the doorknob, but when that didn’t work Stan decided he would just try kicking in the door. There was nothing wrong with old fashion force now and again. 

Stan gave himself the good distance from the door he needed before kicking it in with his dominant foot. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as he thought it was going to be. When the door swing open Stan was almost immediately hit with a chilling breeze and a strong sulfuric odor that seemed to leak from the newly opened doorway. 

Stan held his hand over his mouth and nose, turning his body away from the door. The hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to stand, and Stan was fairly certain his eyes were beginning to water. Before he had a chance to close the door himself, however, a young man Stan had yet to see before reached from beside him and forcefully slammed the door shut. 

“D..Du..Don’t go in there,” the young man informed, borderline scolded, Stan. Like the boy in the yard many nights prior, and the other young man in the powder room weeks ago, the individual who stood beside him had a pale, unhealthy complexion and blue tinted lips. 

“ _Don’t_ go in th..there,” the ghost repeated as if he was making absolutely sure Stan truly understood. Stan gave him a hasty nod as he still covered the bottom half of his face. The specter didn’t waste anymore time to stick around to explain to Stan what he meant. 

Stan felt like here was a lump in his throat. 

He ended up deciding to just put the boxes in a spare bedroom. 

.

“What the hell are you doing?” 

Stan looked up from his task at hand, which since that morning up until late in the afternoon, had been upturning the dirt in his backyard. The recent rainfall had made doing so rather easy.

It was the specter with the glasses from three weeks ago. This was the second time this particular one became visible to Stan. He had been the first Stan had actually seen, the boy in yellow (as Stan had nicknamed him) being the second, and the stuttering young man from the previous day being the third. Stan recalled the boy in yellow alluding to there being more than one of them in his home, but the exact number Stan wasn’t entirely sure. If there were more than three, they had yet to make an appearance.

Not knowing who, or rather _what_ , was dwelling in his home made Stan uneasy, but he figured that knowing might be just as bad. 

“Are you digging your own grave, curly?” the ghost asked, looking down at Stan. Stan knew that he was the taller out of the two, but being shin deep in one of the several holes that now littered his backyard made Stan currently shorter. 

“What do you want?” Stan asked, his tone cold. He didn’t want to give the spirit the satisfaction of catching him off guard this time. Or at least, not enough to actually scare him as badly. Stan had come to a bit more accustomed to odd things happening at this point. 

In the last three weeks alone since Stan first encounter with the bathroom dwelling spirit, episodes of hauntings were beginning to become more frequent. At first it had frightened Stan to no end, but with each incident his skin was getting a bit thicker.

Things continued to disappeared only to have them reappearing at a later date. Objects Stan had already seen like the bicycle and that god forsaken fanny pack made their appearance now and again as well as a few new ones, like a Derry postcard and a walkie talkie. At one point Stan had even found the raincoat the boy in yellow was wearing that night they talked. Everything would show up temporarily, as if it was put down and forgotten, only to be gone the next time Stan looked in the same spot.

Stan also often heard muffled voices through the walls, suggesting that there were conversations being had in the room over. Sometimes he heard the voices much more clearly, as if they were trying to have conversations with him specifically. Though Stan could only make a few words out most of the time. Stan recalled hearing names. He made mental note of a few in particular being Eddie, Mike, and Ben. Or perhaps they had said Bev. Stan wasn’t sure. 

Stan wondered if any one of those names belonged to this spirit.

“I want to know why the hell you’re fucking up the whole backyard,” the spectacled specter told him. “You’re not _actually_ digging your own grave, are you? Looks to me that you’re-- one, two, three, four-- four graves too many.” 

“I’m trying to find your body,” Stan explained, letting the end of the shovel hit the dirt and stay there. Stan looked back up at the dead man. The man was dressed the same way he had been when Stan saw him last. Plus-fours, lapels, brogue shoes. Compared to him, Stan could only assume he was a sight for sore eyes covered in mud. 

The spirit made a face. “What... the.... fuck?” he asked, almost comically so in the same cheeky voice from before. Though it was clear to Stan that he was bewildered. Stan couldn’t help but feel satisfied by this. Finally he had the upper hand in all of this when he had been feeling powerless for weeks. 

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Stan asked seriously. “Your body or something must be somewhere in this house and that’s why you can’t leave and that’s why you’ve been terrorizing me. I’m looking for your body and when I do I’ll..I’ll, I don’t know, I’ll burn it or something and then you can cross over and then you’ll leave me the hell alone.”

Based on the ghost’s expression, Stan wondered if perhaps he had been watching far too much television. It wasn’t until the ghost began to actually laugh at him did Stan know that he absolutely had been watching far too much television. 

“You think my body... is in the backyard?” he clarified. Stan suddenly felt self conscious. “My god, you _are_ fucking crazy, aren’t you? A real modern day nutcase.” 

“I... I don’t know what else to do! You won’t leave me alone. I can’t sleep, you’re always stealing my shit. I nearly broke my damn neck tripping over that damn bike,” Stan said defensively. He didn’t like when people made him feel small. It offended him. He especially didn’t like that the person who was making him feel this way wasn’t even technically a person. Not anymore, at least, Stan didn’t think. “I don’t know where your body is, okay, I’m grasping at straws here.” 

“Makes two of us,” he replied thoughtfully. It took a moment for Stan to realize the spirit was referring to his corpse. Stan furrowed his brow, but didn’t ask. Noticing Stan’s confusion, the ghost cracked him a smug, all-knowing smirk. One that made Stan nervous. “Say, curly, if you do find my body, be sure to let me know, capeesh? I haven’t seen that thing in decades.”

“If I have it my way you won’t be around here long enough for me to tell you,” Stan said, averting his eyes and picking up the shovel once more. 

“You’re cold,” the ghost said. “And _I’m_ the dead one.” 

Almost as quickly as he had appeared, the specter was gone. Stan didn’t even have a chance to ask him if he was Eddie, Mike, or Ben. Or perhaps it was Bev. Stan still wasn’t sure. 

Stan stopped digging soon after. He never did find a body. 

.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything down there out of the usual,” the handyman told Stan as he ascended the stairs from the basement. “What was it you think you saw, again?”

“I already told you, I didn’t _see_ anything. I smelled it. It smelled like sulfur and it was coming from down in the basement,” Stan said. “It _still_ smells like sulfur.” 

“Mmm, well I don’t smell anything,” the man told him. Stan continued to have his arms crossed in font of himself with an unamused looked. “Sulfur bacteria is usually caused down in the well. You _do_ have a well down there, but according to the records the house was hooked up to the water main a couple years ago. You’re getting all your water from the city now. I can check the pipes to make sure there’s no build up but those seem to be pretty new too.” 

“No, no, it’s fine.” Stan decided, his brows knitting together. Perhaps he was going crazy. Stan didn’t think he could necessarily rule that out as a possibility with how his life had been recently.

The sulfuric rotten egg scent wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been the other day when Stan first opened the basement door, but he could absolutely still smell the unique odor. Or perhaps it was just the memory of the horrid scent that was forever scarred into his senses. 

The stuttering spectral form that had appeared the other day was very adamant that Stan not go into the basement, but Stan had taken chemistry before and knew the dangers of Hydrogen Sulfide. When it came to potential contamination of his water, Stan wasn’t going to allow a ghost to tell him what to do. So Stan made an appointment to get it checked. “Are you sure you don’t smell anything?” 

“Not a damn thing,” the handyman assured Stan. Stan just nodded skeptically. “I’ll go ahead and put a solution down the the drains to eat any sulfur bacteria. That’ll clear up any problem I might have missed.”

Stan just nodded again, stepping out of the man’s way. 

“Oh, one more thing,” the man said. 

“Yes?” Stan asked. 

“You know this place is haunted, right?” 

Stan sighed. 

.

For the first time in what felt like weeks Stan was actually tired and actually looking forward to sleeping. After weeks of fighting tooth and nail to deny that there was something unusual happening in his house, Stan could no longer ignore the facts. With accepting the truth came an uneasy feeling that constantly gnawed at his mind. Stan felt unsafe. Too unsafe to sleep that Stan often spent most nights up incredibly late until his body was too exhausted to stay awake. 

It seemed that at long last his body had finally caught up with his mind that once Stan’s head hit his pillow that night he feel asleep almost immediately. 

_Screech._

The screech and crackle of an old-timey radio tore Stan from his sleep. When his eyes opened and adjusted to the dark, he looked at the time on his phone to see that he had only been asleep for roughly an hour. He waited until the sound stopped before closing his eyes and attempting to get back to sleep. 

_Screech._

Stan knew exactly what it was. Well, sort of. Both encounters he had had with the boy in yellow (though one was much more brief than the other and had happened at a time that Stan didn’t understand what was going on) had the screeching and crackling of the radio going off somewhere around them. His equally as brief encounter with the stuttering specter had the same sound. Stan doubted the two were the same spirit, but he did know they emitted the same sound. 

He also knew, at the very least, that one of them was currently responsible for keeping him awake. 

The crackling of the device was loud, but Stan was able to rule out that it was not in his room. Stan rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling as he listened to the disruptive sounds. He allowed himself to enjoy the comforts of his bed as he listened to the radio for a while.

Deep down, it upset Stan how desensitized he was to his unwanted roommates leaving their things around. Particularly when they made unruly noises. To the best of Stan’s knowledge, however, the walkie talkies were the the only item that actually made any noise. Stan was grateful for this. 

Knowing that with the sounds going off he wouldn’t be able to sleep, Stan eventually got up to go find it and hopefully, get rid of it. Or at the least put it in a further away location where he wouldn’t be able to hear it. 

It didn’t take Stan long to find the walkie talkie in the spare room beside his own. The device laid on it’s side at the window. The way the moonlight from outside shone on it made Stan feel as though the device was intentionally placed there for him to find. 

Stan picked it up. 

“Stanley?” it was the voice of the boy in yellow on the opposite end. Stan didn’t ask how the ghost had known his name. His wallet, after all, have gone missing before in the past. Stan was just grateful that it was one of the items that was later returned to him. 

Stan debated in his head if he _actually_ wanted to do this. He knew instantly that the answer was no, but he also knew he had was in too deep at this point. And so, Stan decided to respond. 

“Yes?” he asked into the walkie talkie. 

“You need to keep your voice down,” the boy on the other end told Stan. Stan was about to scold him about being the one who was actually being loud, but he decided against it. It seemed unfair that the boy was telling Stan to be quiet when it was _him_ being disruptive that was the only reason Stan was even awake. 

“I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” the boy explained. This hadn’t seemed to change since their last encounter. The boy wasn’t supposed to be talking to Stan then either, yet he had. Now this time the boy in yellow was the one to initiate the conversation rather than Stan demanding to speak to him. In fact, it seemed that the ghost had even planned the conversation. 

“Then why are you?” Stan asked curiously into the walkie talkie that crackled in his hand. Stan made sure to make his tone softer this time. He looked around in the darkness surrounding him when Stan thought he had seen something in his peripheral, but when Stan turned he found the space was empty. Stan decided to let it go in favor of speaking to the boy.

“My brother knows you went down to the basement,” the voice on the other end said. Like before, the boy sounded uncertain. “He isn’t very happy.” 

“Is your brother the one who stopped me from going down there?” Stan asked. Though he knew in his heart of hearts that there was no way he was actually going to have gone down there to begin with. Not after the smell. Even when the handyman had come, Stan just pointed him in the right direction and stayed in the main part of the house as he worked. 

“Yeah, that’s Billy,” the disembodied voice said over the walkie talkie. “He doesn’t like us going down there. Billy’s real smart. He means well. He doesn’t want you to wake _it_ up.” 

“Wake what up?” Stan asked wanting more clarification. 

“ _It_ ,” the boy repeated. “The _monster_.” 

The boy sounded frightened. 

Stan wasn’t sure he wanted to know what sort of things scared a ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for all the kudos and kind words thus far. I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying this fic as much as I am enjoying writing it xo


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He couldn’t leave and unlike before it was no longer metaphorical. Stan was trapped.

The existence of time had been a topic of debate for humanity for centuries. Humans struggled to prove it’s existence as time tended to never be a tangible experience. It was equally as difficult to write time off as an interpretation of how human beings explained the past and future of the enterally present ‘now’. Stan did consider himself to be a deep thinker, but he never found himself particularly interested in the logistics of time. As far as he knew it was just a tool he used to be punctual. Or more importantly to track key moments in his life regardless how mundane. 

Whether real or not, time had always existed around Stanley Uris. 

Until it didn’t. 

Time in the Neibolt house worked differently. Whether it was literally or hypothetically, however, Stan wasn’t entirely sure. In the past, Stan always knew where he needed to be, who he needed to be there with, and most importantly, _when_ he needed to be there. But now it seemed that was no longer a sequence of seconds, minutes, hours, or days that passed by Stan with each of which being meticulously accounted for. Time just seemed to _stop_.

It was dusk one evening when Stan had realized it. He was in his kitchen, lazily cleaning up after a less than satisfactory dinner when Stan’s mind wondered to the facts and conditions of his relocation. Life before Derry seemed to be almost a fleeting memory as Stan struggled to remember Atlanta, his friends, or even his parents. When he tried to recall when he had moved to Derry to begin with Stan couldn’t quite recall the exact date. 

Had it been a month? Year? Neither of those sounded quite right to Stan, but a definite answer didn’t come to mind either.

It was an odd realization to find that Stan was beginning to get forgetful. Unlike the missing tangible items, Stan couldn’t directly blame his poor recollection on the spirits in his house. Stan, instead, decided to chalk it up to stress. 

In reality, Stan _was_ stressed out. Reasonably so, he would argue. Though it had seemed to take backseat to much more interesting and pressing matters that didn’t seem to like letting Stan forget of _their_ presence, Stan still had his accounting business to deal with. In reality, he hadn’t been dealing with it at all. The bills still came in and the numbers he would still crunch, but the business wasn’t there nor the income, and Stan was _tired_. 

Stan wasn’t use to being unsuccessful. Perhaps he didn’t remember exact details of his life in Atlanta, but as a whole Stan recalled that he had been well off enough. He had a job, he knew. He had a social group, he knew as well. He had a fiancé, Stan definitely knew. Stan also knew he didn’t have any of those now. All he had was a house and the spirits that haunted it.

The shatter of ceramic hitting his floor brought Stan out of his thoughts. He looked over to see that one of the clean dinner bowls he had neatly stacked on the island had fallen from the counter. Stan put down the dish he was washing and wiped his hands dry before going to pick it up. 

With each shard stacked carefully in the palm of his hand, Stan prepared to stand up when he saw feet standing in front of him. White Chuck Taylors. Tube socks. Stan looked up. 

“S..sorry.” The fact that it was one of the specters standing in front of him didn’t surprise Stan necessarily. Though he couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach when he saw them. Stan liked to be able to ignore his surroundings when he could get away with it and when the ghosts made themselves present (though it still had only happened a handful of times) it made it difficult for Stan to pretend otherwise. 

Stan knew this one to be Billy, as the boy in yellow had called him. 

“I d..didn’t mean to break the b..b..bowl,” the ghost explained. “I..I just wanted your attention.” 

“And you couldn’t just say my name?” Stan asked, standing up and carefully tossing the ceramic shards into the waste bin. “You had to break a bowl? Melodramatic, much?” 

“It was an a..accident,” Billy explained. “I... wanted... I thought... L..Last time we met it wasn’t v..very friendly. I didn’t want things to start off on the w..wrong foot.” 

“Wrong foot?” Stan asked. He wasn’t sure if he should be amused or bemused. “I’m sorry, but there is a _right_ foot to this? I’m not trying to be your friend, you realize that, right? I’m not trying to be any of your friends. I’m trying to get you out of my house. Or out of my head. I don’t know... I don’t know which is real.” 

It was a moment of raw vulnerability. Stan didn’t, or rather, couldn’t talk about what was happening around him in this house with anyone else. He didn’t have friends in the town of Derry. Not really, at least. People tended to be friendly but they weren’t necessarily welcoming either. Stan was a transplant and the people of Derry didn’t relate well with him, or at least Stan didn’t relate well with them. Moving into the Neibolt house further divided them. So the few times Stan went into crisis mode where he truly and honestly considered the fact that he might _actually_ be going crazy, he had no one to run the possibility by. 

Judging by how the ghost was looking at him, Stan must have looked particularly powerless. Or perhaps pathetic. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Stan said in a prickly tone. 

“Like?” the ghost asked for clarification. 

“Like you feel sorry for me,” Stan said. “Like you and all of your dead pals aren’t the reason I’m in this situation to begin with.” 

“W..we just wanted to help you,” Billy explained. 

“Wanted to help? Which part of this is particularly helpful, exactly?” Stan stressed. “Instead of minding your own damn business, you’re actively terrorizing me. It’s like you want to drive me out of _my_ house.” 

“I..if you stay here you’ll d..die,” he warned. “Everyone d..does.”

“Did you try and help the others too?” Stan asked. “Because the house is crawling with you guys, so no offense but you missed your mark.” 

“That isn’t f..fair,” Billy said. “You don’t understand what’s happening here. We aren’t the ones--” 

“You aren’t the ones haunting the house,” Stan said particularly irritated. “ _It_ is, right? That’s that the boy in yellow told me the same thing. _It’s_ in the basement and that’s why you didn’t want me to go down there. I would wake it up or something. Why exactly are the rest of you not sleeping either? I think I would have preferred that.” 

“Georgie told you all that?” the stuttering specter asked. Georgie must be the name of the boy in yellow, or as the boy had stated, this ghost’s brother. It was oddly nice to be able to put a name to the face. It seemed that Billy didn’t know about his second conversation with Georgie over the walkie talkies. It was distantly comforting to know that the spirits weren’t omnipresent.

“Yes, Billy, he did,” Stan said. 

“B..Bill is fine,” Bill said. 

Stan didn’t respond. 

“Th..This is real, Stanley,” Bill told him trying to give the conversation momentum once more.

“Stan is fine,” Stan said sardonically. 

Bill just nodded. “I know it’s h..ha..hard to believe. I didn’t either at first, b..but it is. You’re not crazy.” 

“It’s so reassuring to have a _ghost_ tell me I’m not insane,” Stan sighed, leaning against the counter. He rubbed his face with the flats of his hands. This was becoming too much. 

“If _I..It_ wakes up, w..w..we can’t do anything to stop it,” Bill said. “W..we won’t be able to h..help you.” 

Stan didn’t remove his hands from his face until there was silence around him. When he had, the kitchen was empty. 

Stan decided to call it a night at that point. 

.

“Why don’t you just move?” a disembodied voice asked. It was one that Stan hadn’t heard before since he decided not to count the muffled conversations through the walls. The voice was nonthreatening (not that the other voices to this point had been necessarily threatening either). And so when Stan looked up from the papers he had been reading, he was calm. 

It was a young man. Presumably around the same age as the spectacled specter and the ghost he had come to know to be Bill. Based on his shorts, tube socks, and fanny pack however, Stan assumed that this spirit was definitely not from modern times. It wasn’t nearly to the same extreme, but to Stan the ghost looked as if he had just finished working out with Richard Simmons. 

“Derry sucks and your house is fucking haunted,” the ghost explained further, though Stan didn’t feel that he necessarily needed to. As far as Stan was concerned the ghost was preaching to the choir. 

“This place is a financial purgatory,” Stan explained. “No one is exactly lining up to take over my mortgage. I’m basically trapped here.”

“Expect only metaphorically,” the spirit said. Based on his expression Stan could tell that his words hit the ghost a little too close to home. Stan recalled the first conversation he had with the boy in yellow, whom he now knew to be Georgie. Georgie had said they were literally trapped in the Neibolt house. 

Stan nodded. “Yeah, only metaphorically,” he agreed. After the conversation he had with Bill, Stan was a bit remorseful with how unnecessarily cold he had been. Not incredibly remorseful given the circumstances, but enough so that he didn’t want to be rude a second time around. Especially not when he had truly noticed that the ghost was wearing the fanny pack he often found about house. “Do you always carry sinus relief medicine with you?” 

“Huh?” the specter asked, confused at first before catching on. “Oh. Well, yeah, technically now I do. You’re just lucky that I happened to have it on my when I died. I don’t know how well pharmaceutical expiration dates translate to being, well, dead. I know that I personally wouldn't have taken something a ghost gave me, but you looked desperate. I didn’t think it would actually work.” 

“What do you mean?” Stan asked curiously 

The ghost opened his fanny pack to pull out the bottle of sinus relief. Stan recognized it to be the same one he had found prior. “We’re stuck with the stuff that was on us when we died,” the phantom explained, shaking the pill bottle. “They’re all still in here. The one you took probably just had a placebo affect.” 

“You... counted them?” Stan asked. Not even _he_ was that anal. 

“What? No, I didn’t--,” the ghost sighed, clearly more annoyed than frustrated. “No, I just know, okay? I’ve been carrying these things around for thirty years.” 

The idea of taking not only thirty year old but also ghost pills made Stan’s stomach turn. Stan decided he didn’t want to think too much about that detail. 

“Well, thanks anyway,” Stan told him as genuinely as he could despite being noticeably reserved. “It was one of the nicer hauntings.” 

“Hauntings? We aren’t haunting you,” the ghost said. The phrase was identical to what both Georgie and Bill had said. At this point, Stan wondered if the spirits were a broken record. Or perhaps they were very adamant of distinguishing themselves from _It_. If _It_ was responsible for all of their deaths like Bill had alluded to, then Stan couldn’t blame them for wanting to differentiate themselves from the monster. 

“So I’ve been told,” Stan said. “ _It’s_ the one haunting the house.” 

If the ghost had picked up on Stan’s disinterested, almost bored, tone they didn’t react. Instead, the specter seemed as though Stan’s words had completely thrown him off. Or at the very least made him nervous. 

“How do you know about..? Did you see _It_?” they asked. 

Stan shook his head. “I didn’t see anything.” 

The tension in the ghost’s shoulders visibly eased. He nodded with a nervous laugh. “Good.” 

“What is _It_?” Stan asked. Both Georgie and Bill had not been generous with details. Stan figured that since they were already on the topic he could use opportunity to press for more answers. 

“The less you know is probably better,” the specter insisted. 

“The more I know the more likely I won’t do something to wake _It_ up,” Stan said. Stan tried to pinpoint the exact moment that he become so invested in this. He was unable to. 

The fanny pack clad ghost chewed his lip as though he was contemplating Stan’s request. “Mm-mm. No. I’m not getting involved in this,” he decided with a shake of his head. He must have seen some logic in Stan’s statement, however, since he continued to speak. “You should talk to Mike. He knows more about _It_ than any of us anyway.” 

So there definitely was a Mike. That was one of the names Stan recalled hearing through the walls. He knew of Bill as well as Georgie. Stan was also fairly certain he was heard the name Eddie too. Whether it was Ben or Bev, Stan still wasn’t sure. It was beginning to become difficult to remember all of their names, particularly for those who had yet a face assigned to them. There was still the spectacled specter name that Stan wasn’t sure of. Perhaps he was Mike. Or Ben. Bev? Stan’s head hurt. 

“What is your name?” Stan decided to ask. He was tired of playing this complicated game of Guess Who. 

“Eddie,” he said. 

Stan nodded. “Thanks again for the placebos, Eddie.” 

.

Despite having so many rooms, even more space, and being the only one with a tangible body, Stan beginning to be feel claustrophobic. Stan knew he didn’t get out much. That was never important to him at any stage of his life. He had always considered himself much more of a homebody, but the amount of time he spent moving from one room to another in the Neibolt house heavily outweighed the amount of time he had spent literally anywhere else. 

Being introverted did not necessarily mean being a hermit, but Stan struggled to remember the last time he had left his property. This fact once again recalled Stan on his faulty recollection. 

There was nothing Stan needed to do outside of the house. No errands he knew of that he needed to run. No groceries he knew he needed to get. One thing Stan did know, however, was that he _needed_ to get out of the Neibolt house. 

Stan stepped out on the front porch. From the vantage point he had his neighborhood looked dreary and Stan tried to remember if Derry had always been so unforgiving. He thought he had known himself well enough to trust that he would never do anything without rhyme or reason, but after being in a constant state of reevaluating his choices and psychoanalyzing his own thoughts, Stan couldn’t help but wonder if there was any remnants of the logical individual he once was left inside of him. 

Stan made his way down the steps, but when he hit the bottom he was greeted with the unusual sound of dead grass. Stan knew his lawn to be well manicured, which made looking down and actually seeing said dead grass even stranger. At this point, Stan was accustomed to the unusual, but aside from bowls breaking, lights turning on and off, and muddy footprints his environment had never changed around him to such an extreme. 

Stan looked around to find his entire front yard dead and overgrown. There was an abundance of bright yellow sunflowers littered between empty beer bottles and trash that surrounded the old rotted tree that was once alive and particularly popular with the neighborhood birds. The entirety of the front garden was lined with a decoratively destroyed rod iron fence. Overgrown dead foliage hung overhead from the patio cover, which had only brought Stan’s attention to the rest of the house. 

The house was different but Stan was able to recognize it to be Neibolt house all the same. In it’s current state of decay, Stan couldn’t help but wonder how the old house was even able to continue standing. Stan wasn’t given an opportunity to dwell very long on the question, however. The front door (that looked both oddly familiar and foreign) squeaked and opened inwardly as if it were telling Stan to step inside.

Stan was _not_ doing this today. 

He turned way, his back now facing the house and he stepped towards the end of his property. He wasn’t doing this anymore, or at the absolute least, Stan wasn’t doing this right now. He knew deep down that this the dying mess behind him was his house and without anywhere else to go, Stan was bound to return at some point. But right now was not that point. He had promised himself that he would get out of the Neibolt house today even if it was just for a few hours. 

By the time Stan hit the edge of his property, however, he couldn’t go any further. This wasn’t from lack of trying. Stan willed his body to take another step. One more step was all that was needed for him to officially be off of the land lot, but despite his best efforts, Stan couldn’t move forward. 

Stan felt sick to his stomach. 

When he successfully moved again of his own freewill it wasn’t away from his house like Stan would have preferred, but rather to turn around and face the building once more. Stan found that the door was still wide open, but he couldn’t see anything except the uninviting black of the inside. 

He couldn’t leave the Neiboldt house and unlike before it was no longer metaphorical. Stan was trapped. 

Stan reluctantly stepped closer to the house. Each step became easier than the last but it wasn’t because Stan was getting braver, he knew. It was because _something_ was pulling Stan towards residence.

Stan could feel his body shaking. He could hear his heart beating. He felt faint. His body moved on it’s own as Stan ascended the patio stairs once more. Stan reached for the one of the beams supporting the patio overhead but he couldn’t hold on. When his body brought him to the front door, Stan held on to the doorframe desperately to no avail. 

“No, no, no no,” Stan repeated in a mantra of terror but his body didn’t stop moving as it pressed forward further into the dying building. 

Like the outside, the house Stan had grown so familiar with, was decayed. The paint on the walls were chipped and pealing. The array of different style decor and furniture was ruined. The wooden floor finish was dull and disgusting. The entirely of the house was covered in dust in a way that would have made Stan’s skin crawl if he wasn’t so focused on the putrid smell. 

Sulfur. 

It was then that Stan realized where his body was bringing him. With each step Stan bypassed the lounge, then kitchen, until he was walking down the hallway towards the basement door. The very basement Bill warned him about. The basement Georgie told him _It_ was in. The home of the monster that scared even the spectral figures that resided around him. 

A level of panic that Stan didn’t even know was possible formed in his chest only to make an exit through him mouth in the form of a desperate cry. Stan’s clawed at the hallway walls in a last-ditch effort for salvation, but all Stan was able to achieve was flecks of old paint flakes poking into the sensitive skin beneath his fingernails. The forced movement of Stan’s body became more spasmodic and unstable as he neared the basement door. Realizing that he was entirely helpless, Stan stopped fighting and instead held himself for comfort. 

In a sound reminiscent to when Stan kicked it in, the basement door swung inward. Stan squeezed his eyes closed. This time it wasn't willful ignorance. Stan wasn’t trying to ignore what was happening this time. He was afraid. Far too afraid to see what was going to happen. Far too afraid to see what was in the basement. Far too afraid to see _It_. 

The sulfuric odor grew stronger as Stan’s body descended the stairs of the basement. It was cold. Much too cold to be possible given the weather that day. Stan’s body began to shiver and Stan found that he could no longer keep his eyes closed out of anticipation for the worse. He opened them. The basement was dark but it wasn’t impossible to see. In the center of the room stood a stone well. Something Stan thought looked as if it had come out of a story tale if it hadn’t been more it’s deteriorating state. 

At the edge of the well, Stan’s body stopped. 

The room surrounding him was silent. Stan could only hear the sound of his own breath, his heart racing, and his teeth chattering. Stan’s body began to lean forward, and much like before, Stan resistance did not work. When he was facing the much too dark black of the inside of the well, Stan could faintly make out two parallel white dots.

It took Stan a moment, but soon he could recognize them to be the whites of eyes and they were looking directly up at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowza! Thank you all so much for the kind words. I really enjoy writing this and it warms my heart to see you're enjoying it too. Thank you xoxo


End file.
